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24 June 2012

Eating habits

So. One week in. One week without sodas, sweets, crisps, fried foods and bad habits. And it's feeling pretty good so far! I thought I would miss the sweets and snacks, but I'm doing pretty good so far, snack-wise. I even survived my secondary school reunion barbecue without stuffing my face with bread and satay sauce and bad, fattening meats. I did kinda stuff my face with fresh pineapple. (My god, that pineapple. Oh, oh, oh, my, that was one deliciously sweet, ripe, gorgeous pineapple.) But that's a good thing!

I went against the weight loss tips and weighed myself every day, (I know, even against the advice of my physical therapist, bad me!) but I only saw a slight rise in the line on Friday morning, the morning after I ate a bigger meal than I had planned. It was a bad meal, too, with a creamy sauce and a lot of pasta. So far, I have lost 2 kg this week, a massive amount if you take into account that I did not do a lot more than normal, except change my daily food intake and watch my calories a lot more.

I installed a nifty app on my mobile phone called the Calorie counter by Fatsecret, which is really helping me in keeping an eye on what I eat during the course of a day and to keep my total number of calories below the maximum number I allow. I set myself on 1500 a day, which gives me some wiggle room with my evening meals since the physical therapist told me to stay between 1600 and 1800 a day. I know that eating less than I should sounds bad, but I've hardly been hungry this week! The only time it really hit was on Thursday evening, and I had a very unpleasant evening trying to chug as much water as possible while telling my body to sod off and stop asking for food. I know it wasn't hunger, but it sure did felt like it. Oddly enough, this also was the one evening I ate too much for dinner!

Dinner:
- Grilled chicken and green veggies, and a handful of potato-somethings. This week, it was mostly baked potato cubes.

Evening:
- a handful of almonds

During the day:
- 2 litres of water

Depending on what I eat for dinner, this usually adds up to roughly 1500 calories. I have been trying to find more healthy, low-calorie dinners that will satisfy both me and the BF, but he's a picky eater, so it's making it somewhat more difficult than I had anticipated. Plus, I want him to eat well, but he's being exceptionally supportive of my mission and is insisting I eat what I need to, and he'll just fill up on snacks during the evening if the meal doesn't do the trick. He's got a very active metabolism, and has trouble maintaining his current weight of 50 kg. It is making this whole thing somewhat more complicated. I've got some plans for this week, though, to keep him satisfied (and let him eat some of his favourite foods), where I can just substitute part of the meal with something healthy for me!

Most dieting tips I see tell me to aim for 3 meals that fill up, and add 2 or 3 snacks during the day, aiming for some food every 3 hours. However, my breakfast always fills me up until pretty much 1 pm, when I eat my lunch. At 4, I eat a snack, and I have one more in the evening if I feel like it. Funnily enough, the snack-habit is the easiest to kick: even with the BF sitting across from me, munching on crisps, I don't feel the need to grab something for myself to snack on.

So. To conclude week one:
I lost 2 kg (from 112 kg to 110 kg.).
I had little trouble kicking it off, with one hickup on Thursday evening after a bad meal. I'm pretty sure it was because of that meal.
I went to the gym twice and got good advice from an expert, who will be helping me with my weight loss and will keep an active eye on my progress.

In the following weeks, I want to learn:
- what are bad 'healthy' foods and what are good healthy foods to have at mealtime, so I can put together a better, healthier, leaner meal that will still fill up me and the BF and won't leave us hungry after an hour
- how to better spread out calories during the day without having to cut in portion size during dinnertime, because I want to eat properly to avoid getting hungry in the evening
- how to include exercise in my everyday routine, including good exercises I can do at home during the day, that won't do any harm to the injury in my leg. I read that doing jumping jacks are awesome, for instance, but I know that doing jumping jacks will hurt my calf.
- if I can go to the gym three times a week. I want to start tomorrow with going in the evening after dinner, and see how that works for me, and to go on Wednesday and Friday morning.

Woohoo - 2kg! That's brilliant, it sounds lika a LOT to lose just in one week! Thinking about physical exercise that isn't too hard on the body, have you thought about swimming? You train all your muscles and injury-risk is much lower! I have a neuromuscular condition so I have to train my muscles, but I have a very bad spine, swimming is the perfect solution. Maybe you could try! :-) x